The Future of High-Definition Audio Is Here

How to listen to the best of the best new Blu-ray and vinyl music releases

"We're barely getting five percent of the what the artist recorded when we listen to music these days," David Crosby, the Byrds legend and one-fourth of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young told me when we sat down to talk about the amazing quality of the recently released CSNY 1974, the multi-disc document of the band's debauched early-'70s tour. "It's a shame, because with a cheap Blu-ray player and a decent pair of headphones, anyone can experience probably better than what I heard onstage when it happened. We have all this technology around us but with MP3s and streaming we're settling for something really subpar."

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Sure, we all love the convenience of iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. With music all around us — on our phones, at work, on our TVs — it's foolish to rail against what has essentially replaced radio in the 21st century, as many artists and audiophiles do. But Crosby is right: It doesn't take much to exponentially improve your music-listening experience.

"I don't know if Neil is going to succeed with Pono," Crosby went on, referring to bandmate Neil Young's Kickstarter-funded foray into high-definition audio. "But he is right that we don't have to settle for music that sounds so terrible."

Believe it or not, for under $200 you'll be able to hear music of about the same quality as what the artists heard in the studio. Plug just about any budget-priced Blu-ray player with audio outputs into a decent stereo system and the world of Pure Audio and high definition Blu-ray discs will be literal music to your ears. (If you don't have a home stereo, hunt down an older model Blu-ray player with a headphone jack or pick up an inexpensive headphone amp.)

Next, get yourself a decent pair of headphones. I'm not talking those (genuinely awful) Beats things, either. Instead, shop around in the $100 to $200 price range, especially at a retail store where you can sample what the various models sound like. You may want to go old-school with the Koss Pro-4AAor Pro-S headphones, but I'm partial to Grado's SR-80e (lots of high end, but great sound for the money) and Sennheiser's Momentum headphones (lots of bass but warm-sounding, too).

And if you want to add a bit of old school to your setup, you can pick up a totally respectable turntable for just a few hundred dollars. Don't skimp on the cartridge — though Grado and Ortofon both make great budget-friendly options — and don't be fooled by the stream of remastered vinyl filling the racks of your local indie record shop. There isn't the quality control there was back in the day and most clean copies of your favorite records from the '60s and '70s will far outperform their newer counterparts, and at a fraction of the cost.

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Now that you've got a home audio setup that didn't break the bank — and will make your daytime workspace listening seem like the old AM radio everyone used to press to their ears — where do you begin when it comes to getting your feet wet with what to listen to? Here's a handy primer on the best of the best of some recent high-resolution releases.

The Beatles in Mono

At the top of the heap is a blast from the past. This week the box set Beatles in Mono, compiling the band's '60s mono mixes onto 14 top-grade vinyl LPs, will set a new bar for reissues. Cut at Abbey Road Studios directly from the original analog tapes, using the original cutting engineer's session notes, these LPs are far and away the best-sounding vinyl reissues out there. Many recent vinyl releases — including the US version of The Beatles' own Beatles in Stereobox in 2012 — have suffered from poor quality control. Not so on this spectacular set. (Of special note is the now-collectible high-resolution apple-shaped USB stick of The Beatles' 2009 CD remasters, at much better resolution than the CD versions.) "I'll actually put on Abbey Road, if I had to choose one to put on on vinyl, because I love side two, with all the tom-toms and everything, but that's in stereo, of course," former Beatle Ringo Starr told me recently. "In mono, for me it's Revolver. That's where we really took off creatively. That's the one where everything changed." While the mono sound may put off those who are new to the high-fidelity market, these are the mixes John, Paul, George, and Ringo approved back in the day. Worth every penny of the hefty price tag.

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Pink Floyd, Immersion and The Division Bell box sets

Pink Floyd were probably the first band at the forefront of giving fans the best possible audio experience, whether on vinyl or in concert. Back in the '70s, in fact, salespeople at high-end audio stores would wow their customers with the band's The Dark Side of the Moon. That album has seen multiple format releases (audiophile LP, SACD, and surround among them), but the band's 2011 Immersion box sets were an audiophile's dream. Surround and high-resolution versions of Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall were included in the related box sets, and each was nothing short of spectacular. Even the (for now) last Pink Floyd album The Division Bell recently got the deluxe treatment, with both superb vinyl and hi-res Blu-ray versions included. "Our albums were really well-recorded," drummer Nick Mason told me at the time of the Immersion releases. "We've always tried to offer the fans the absolute best possible listening experience."

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Tom Petty, Hypnotic Eye

For a seemingly laid-back, old-fashioned guy, Tom Petty has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to the next audio frontier. "There's no reason people can't hear it the same way we hear it in the studio if the technology is available," Petty told me as I sat next to him at a listening party for the surround mix of his 2010 studio album Mojo. In an effort to give that quality to his fans, Petty has enlisted the help of crack studio engineer Ryan Ulyate, who to date has delivered high-resolution and surround mixes of Petty's classic Damn the Torpedoes and his Live Anthology from 2009, as well as Mojo and his latest, Hypnotic Eye, which absolutely must be heard on 180 gram vinyl, high res, and surround to really be appreciated.

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CSNY 1974

"I was done mixing the first 10 of the 40 songs when Neil [Young] called me and asked what resolution we were mixing at," Graham Nash says of his work on behalf of his bandmates in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on the recent Pure Audio CSNY 1974release. "When I told him, he made me scrap everything and start over at the highest rate possible. He was right. The final version sounds like you're there, at the best concert we ever gave." The acoustic segments on CSNY 1974, in particular, which sound great on CD (and even iTunes), are breathtaking on Blu-ray. If there's one release this year that would make you want to dive into the high-resolution listening market, this is the one.

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The Clash, Sound System and Studio Albums

"I couldn't believe how much information was missing from our last batch of CDs [in 1999]," The Clash's Mick Jones told me upon the release of the 2013 CD box set Sound System and studio albums vinyl box, which were also released in killer high-resolution HDtracks versions. If you like it raw, wild, and always probing for the new direction, pick up any one of The Clash's albums. London Calling, Sandinista!, and Combat Rock still sound as though they were recorded tomorrow. "This is it. This is the final word, in my opinion," the band's bassist Paul Simonon said, putting it perfectly.

Led Zeppelin

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"There are high-resolution versions included in each of the box sets, but I've also remastered these in the highest resolution possible, for whatever format comes next," Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin's legendary guitarist and producer, told me upon the re-release of the first three Zeppelin albums last spring. After years of shoddy or overmastered releases, Led Zeppelin's catalog is finally getting the treatment it deserves. The high-res downloads included along with the stellar vinyl versions in the super deluxe boxes are an astonishing combination. Best of all, Led Zeppelin IV (i.e., the one with "Stairway to Heaven") hits the racks next month.

More assorted LPs and Blu-ray discs to sink your teeth into

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You're going to be both amazed and shocked when you dig in to the many fantastic Blu-ray, Pure Audio, and remastered LP versions of your favorite albums from the past, and some of the best current releases. I recently previewed the revelatory new Blu-ray version of Bob Marley's Legendhere, but John Lennon's Imagine, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road are equally great. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme also get honorable mention, but Exile on Main St. by the Rolling Stones was hugely disappointing.

As for LPs, you're frankly better off with a nice, clean vintage copy of your favorite golden oldie at about $10 from your local record shop, vinyl-hunters paradise Discogs, or eBay, as many of the new releases and remasters hitting the streets these days vary wildly in quality. But The Temptations' Cloud Nine, John Lennon's Shaved Fish, the Bob Dylan box set The Original Mono Recordings, the new Oasis remasters, and Paul Weller's lastthreealbums are all exceptions and a great place to start (or restart) your collection.

The real wild cards here, of course, are Neil Young's Pono, and the just-announced Tidal. Pono made a big splash with its high-profile Kickstarter campaign, and enlisted lots of big names to support the cause, but the company appears to be in complete disarray, with Neil Young apparently firing Pono's CEO and taking over himself, then promptly disappearing to deal with his divorce and record a new album. As for Tidal — an offshoot of the European WiMP high-resolution streaming service that is by all accounts a revelation to all who have used it — it is so new to the game that there is no indication as to when it will hit the US market.

Until those services prove themselves vital or not, you now have a handy starter guide that will exponentially improve your listening experience. Once you dig into this, I promise you will be counting the hours until you can get home and away from those pesky computer speakers.

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